'Subway Guy' addresses child obesity during Chamber address

Darrin Phegley/The Gleaner
Jared Fogle, also known as the ‘Subway Guy,’ displays a pair of 60-inch jeans he wore at the peak of his obesity while talking to Holy Name School students about healthy eating and fitness Thursday afternoon. While in college at Indiana University and at 425 pounds, Fogle decided to start eating Subway sandwiches twice a day. Within three month he had lost 94 pounds and within a year he had lost 245 pounds.$RETURN$$RETURN$

The Gleaner

Darrin Phegley / The Gleaner
After listening to Jared the Subway Guy talk about the importance of healthy eating and exercise, Holy Name School students line danced to Cotton Eyed Joe Thursday afternoon, May 9, 2013.$RETURN$$RETURN$

The Gleaner

The Henderson-Evansville area has an unfortunate distinction. In 2011, the Evansville metropolitan area was ranked by a Gallup poll as America's fattest city.

Jared Fogle thinks the area could do better.

"You don't want to be on this list as No. 1," the fellow known as "Jared from Subway" told a Henderson Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner audience Thursday evening.

Fogle knows. As a youngster, he played soccer, baseball, tennis and other sports. Then he was given his own Nintendo video game.

"All the things I used to love, I gave up" and adopted "a very sedentary lifestyle," Fogle said.

His diet consisted of burgers, fried chicken and pizza. His activity level went to practically nothing.

By the time he was a freshman at Indiana

University, he weighed 425 pounds, wore size 60 jeans and was developing health problems. Doctors told him he would be lucky to live to age 30.

"I was 20," he recalled.

Next door to his little college apartment was a Subway sandwich shop. Fogle struck on an idea: Eat two sandwiches a day with just lean meat or vegetables; avoid fattening cheese, oil, ranch dressing or mayonnaise; limit himself to baked potato chips; and drink only water or diet soda.

"It was sort of a crazy idea, but it clicked," Fogle said.

"In three months, I lost 94 pounds," he said. He also started exercising, beginning with walking.

Not long after that, a reporter for the IU student newspaper wrote a story about Jared's experience. Then he got a call from Oprah Winfrey's production company.

"When Oprah calls you, go," Fogle said.

An advertising campaign with Subway began, and 15 years later, he has kept off the weight and travels the world, promoting the sandwich chain.

But he has a larger mission.

"My whole campaign in life is to fight childhood obesity," Fogle said. "Henderson, we have a problem; you have one of the highest childhood obesity problems on our doorstep."

He travels continually to schools, including in Henderson on Thursday, to encourage children to not do as he did — and to encourage schools to embrace the CATCH (Coordinated Approach to Child Health) approach of exercise and smarter food choices.

"One in three schoolchildren are overweight or obese," Fogle said.

"Childhood obesity is one of the toughest problems in this country," he said. "It will take many, many approaches. It will take an entire community to wrap its arms around it."